The GSA Family and Kinship Network is organizing a seminar for the 2019 Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, October 3-6 in Portland, Oregon. We invite proposals for the seminar, Family and Knowledge.
This seminar explores "Das Wissen der Familie": what kind of knowledge about the family is produced in autobiographies, diaries, letters, literary texts, or films? What kinds of knowledge—about the domestic sphere, gender differences, or practical skills—are produced by and transferred via the family across historical eras? The family is a site of education, both practical and affective; it further functions as a transmitter of wider social knowledge, mediating between social orders and individual. But it also has its secrets: it can suppress knowledge by keeping knowledge from family members or from outsiders; by hiding the explicitly political or producing an ideology of quietistic domesticity—how can hidden forms of knowledge be exposed? We invite participants from all periods of German Studies (history, literature, and film), and from all career stages; we particularly welcome multi- and interdisciplinary approaches, and those that address questions of diversity and inclusion.

GSA seminars meet over three days at the conference. Seminar participants will be asked to submit a paper of 5-6 pages three weeks before the conference. Pre-circulated papers will be grouped into three themes (one per day of the seminar) and discussed in turn along with a short theoretical or methodological text.

Proposals:

Please submit a 300-word abstract of what you would like to contribute to the seminar and a brief bio. Seminar enrollment opens on 5 January 2019, and applications are due by 26 January 2019. Responses will be sent out on 31 January. Please visit the GSA website and submit electronically at https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa.

Please contact conveners, Sarah Eldridge (seldrid2@utk.edu), Margareth Lanzinger (margareth.lanzinger@univie.ac.at), or Eleanor ter Horst (eterhorst@southalabama.edu), with any questions. For more information about the 2019 German Studies Association Conference, see here: https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current-conference